Contents

Caliphate

The invasion of Persia was completed five years after the
death of the Islamic ProphetMuhammad, and all of the Persian territories
came under Arab control, though pockets of tribal resistance
continued for centuries in the Afghan territories. During the 7th
century, Arab armies made their way into the region
of Afghanistan from Khorasan with the new religion of Islam. At this point in time the
area that is currently Afghanistan had a multi-religious population
consisting of Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Jews, and others.

Part of the region was ruled by TurkicBuddhist/Hindu dynasty called the Kabul Shahis since the 5th century AD. The
Arabs were unable to succeed in converting the population of that
area because of constant revolts from the mountain tribes. In 870,
Ya'qub-i Laith Saffari, a local
ruler from the Saffarid dynasty of Zaranj, conquered most of the cities of
present-day Afghanistan in the name of Islam.

Arab armies carrying the banner of Islam came out of the west
to defeat the Sasanians in 642
AD and then they marched with confidence to the east. On the
western periphery of the Afghan area the princes of Herat and Seistan gave way to rule by
Arab governors but in the east, in the mountains, cities submitted
only to rise in revolt and the hastily converted returned to their
old beliefs once the armies passed. The harshness and
avariciousness of Arab rule produced such unrest, however, that
once the waning power of the Caliphate became apparent, native rulers once
again established themselves independent. Among these the Saffarids of Seistan shone briefly in the
Afghan area. The fanatic founder of this dynasty, the coppersmith’s
apprentice Yaqub ibn Layth Saffari, came forth from his capital at
Zaranj in 870 AD and marched through Bost, Kandahar, Ghazni, Kabul, Bamyan, Balkh and Herat, conquering in the name of Islam.[1]

—Nancy Hatch Dupree
, 1971

From the eighth century to the ninth century, many inhabitants
of what is present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and areas of northern India were converted to Sunni Islam. In some
cases, however, many people that were conquered by the Saffarids
would rebel and revert to prior forms of worship.[1]
The mountain areas were still not completely converted and remained
largely by people of non-Muslim faiths. In a book called Hudud-al-Alam,
written in 982 CE, it mentions a village near Jalalabad, Afghanistan, where the local king
used to have many Hindu, Muslim and Afghan wives.[2] This
indicates that the mentioned Afghans were not Hindus or
Muslims.

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Ghaznavids

Out of the Samanid
dynasty came the Ghaznavids, whose warriors forged the first
great Islamic empire from Ghazni (Afghanistan) that spanned much of the
Iranian plateau, Central Asia and conducted many successful
raids into Hindustan.
During the end of the ninth century, the Samanids extended its rule
from Bukhara to as far south
as the Indus River
and west into most of Persia. By the mid-tenth century, the Samanid
dynasty had crumble in the face of attacks from Turkish tribes to
the north and from the Ghaznavids, a rising Turkic Muslim
dynasty in Afghanistan.

It is surmised from the writings of Al Biruni that some
Afghans who lived west of India (modern-day Pakistan) had not been completely converted to
Islam. Al Biruni, writing in Tarikh al Hind, also alludes to those
Afghan tribes as being neither Muslim nor Hindu, but simply Afghans.

The most explicit mentioning of the Afghans appears in Al-
Baruni’s Tarikh al hind (eleventh century AD). Here it is said that
various tribes of Afghans lived in the mountains in the west of India. Al Baruni adds that
they were savage people and he describes them as Hindus.[2]

—Willem Vogelsang
, 2002

Al Beruni mentions the Afghans once (ed Sachau, I
208) saying that in the western mountains of India live
various tribes of Afghans who extend to the neighbourhood of the Sindh (i.e., Indus) valley. Thus in the
eleventh century when the Afghans are first mentioned, they are
found occupying the Sulaiman Mountains now occupied by
their descendants, the very tribes which the advocates of the
exclusive claims of the Durannis will not admit to be true Afghans.
Al Beruni no doubt also alludes to them in the passage (loc.
Cit. p 199) where he says that rebellious savage races, tribes
of Hindus, or akin to them inhabit the mountains which form the
frontier of India towards the west.[3]

—H.A. Rose
, 1997

Various historical sources such as Martin Ewans, E.J. Brill and
Farishta have recorded
that the complete conversion of Afghanistan, Pakistan and northern
India to Islam was during the rule of SultanMahmud of Ghazni.

The Arabs advanced through Sistan and conquered Sindh early in the eighth century. Elsewhere
however their incursions were no more than temporary, and it was
not until the rise of the Saffarid dynasty in the ninth century that
the frontiers of Islam effectively reached Ghazni and Kabul. Even
then a Hindu dynasty the Hindushahis, held Gandhara and eastern borders. From the tenth
century onwards as Persian language and culture continued to spread
into Afghanistan, the focus of power shifted to Ghazni, where a Turkish dynasty, who started by ruling
the town for the Samanid dynasty of Bokhara, proceeded to create an
empire in their own right. The greatest of the Ghaznavids was Muhmad who
ruled between 998 and 1030. He expelled the Hindus from Ghandhara,
made no fewer than 17 raids into India. He encouraged mass
conversions to Islam, in India as well as in Afghanistan.[4]

—Martin Ewans
, 2002

Al-Idirisi testifies that until as
late as the 12th century, a contract of investiture for every Shahi
king was performed at Kabul and that here he was obliged to agree
to certain ancient conditions which completed the contract.[5] The
Ghaznavid military incursions assured the domination of Sunni Islam in what is
now Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. The most renowned of the
dynasty's rulers was Mahmud of Ghazni, who consolidated control
over the areas south of the Amu Darya then carried out devastating raids
into India. With his booty from India, Mahmud built a great capital
at Ghazni, founded
universities, and patronized scholars. By the time of his death,
Mahmud ruled a vast empire that stretched from Kurdistan to the entire Hindu Kush region as far east as the Punjab as well as
territories far north of the Amu Darya. However, as occurred so often in
this region, the demise in 1030 of this military genius who had
expanded the empire to its farthest reaches was the death knell of
the dynasty itself. The rulers of the Ghorids of Ghor in modern-day
Afghanistan, captured and burned Ghazni in 1149, just as the
Ghaznavids had once conquered Ghor. Not until 1186, however, was
the last representative of the Ghaznavids uprooted by the Ghorids
from his holdout in Lahore, in
the Punjab.